Microfilm Dot On Tooth Pins Down Victims` Id

DETROIT — Police find a jogger unconscious beside a street, an apparent hit-and-run victim. Officers call emergency medical help and then search for identification--a wallet perhaps, or a medical alert bracelet--but find none. Then an officer lifts the jogger`s cheek to reveal a tiny microfilm dot stuck to a molar. The woman is not a secret agent carrying military secrets. The microdot contains her name, vital medical data and emergency phone numbers.

This account is, for now, only a scenario. Yet, thousands of Americans are having a dentist affix a tiny film dot to a tooth for as little as $25, and many parents are doing the same with their children.

The dots are flat and about 2.5 millimeters in diameter, or the size of a typewritten upper-case ``O.`` Competing firms offer two varieties, each costing $15 including a spare.

One contains all the information on the dot. It can be read on the tooth with a Brunton`s Otoscope, the lighted magnifying device doctors use to examine ear canals. Or, it can be removed and read under a 15-power microscope.

The other contains the person`s social security number and an 800 number that can be read on the tooth with the naked eye. A computer operator at the 800 number then supplies the vital information.

Jeffrey Maxwell, forensic dentist in Tazewell County, Ill., is co-inventor of the MICRO I-D, the type with all the data on the dot.

Maxwell said he and Pekin, Ill., police Sgt. Jim Conover came up with the idea for the MICRO I-D during the spring of 1984 while feeding information on missing children into an FBI computer.